Robert Muir

Retired

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@TSLAFanMtl When are they going to fix Siri???

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@naval The choice will be Chavez or Franco. 😳

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@wholemars I wish Tesla had designed the hood such that one could be mounted in the frunk. 😢

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

Innocents > Criminals

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@gailalfaratx I hardly receive any spam in my email. Gmail does a great job filtering it out. 👍

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@joelpollak I hear that Miami is a good place to invest.

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@FischerKing64 I like that you can always find a positive spin to things. 🤣

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Seth Cohen @OverReactor1776]

Now that I’m out of government, I can finally respond for myself: Get bent, soyboy. We didn’t do this for “Silicon Valley . . . companies.” We did this for you, for your family, your community, your state, your nation, and your species.

Nuclear energy provides the safest, highest density, reliable power available on our planet. My career colleagues at DOE and NRC inspired me to think about nuclear as a way to forge American steel and electrolyze aluminum without releasing particulate matter, to desalinate water in the Middle East and save humanity from resource wars. By rejecting the false narratives and Cold War hysteria, we can secure the next American century while raising whole countries out of poverty.

Do you really think I left an incredible career at Kirkland, paid out of pocket for an apartment in DC and dozens of cross-country trips, and left my family on the west coast because I wanted to enrich people I never met before taking this job? I came to D.C. to do something that mattered, to satisfy a driving curiosity (more on that later), and, most importantly, to serve.

As I learned more about nuclear energy and its history, I developed a conviction that one nuclear’s biggest issues was a culture of cynicism: nothing new or exciting could happen because it would end in disappointment, and that militated against rocking the boat even a tiny bit. The career staff in government and their industry counterparts lived through dark winters before and stopped believing that warm springs could bloom into summers.

I have two core philosophies. First, I believe in ruthless optimism. Rational decision making requires detached risk analysis. But we also cannot win if we believe we can lose. Merging the two requires orienting teams around driving missions. That way, when a real opportunity presents itself, you can take a huge swing.

If I take credit for anything—honestly, almost all of the success belongs to the incredible and dedicated people at @ENERGY and @NRCgov—it’s countering the cultural rot and morass that risked forfeiting American excellence. My colleagues and I gave cover to the scientists and engineers, which freed them up to focus on delivering safe power. And, as success materialized, they started to dream again. That’s why the pilot program succeeded, and why I feel confident about the future of NLICs and NRC reform. Nobody needs me anymore because they can innovate on their own.

My second core philosophy is to assume positive intent. Avi, I know that you heard about my real motivations from multiple people you interviewed when preparing your hit piece on me. Rather than telling that story, one which could help inspire another generation of people to use their talents for the greater good, you ignored them. Instead, you implied that Peter Thiel recruited me for nefarious purposes. (I’ve never met him, but, @peterthiel, if you’re reading this, I’m a huge fan!)

Nuclear regulation starts and ends with safety. I promised everyone I worked with that I would resign before doing or pushing for anything that could compromise public safety. But I also distinguished between real safety and performative bullshit. That’s what the careers came to embrace, too. We love nuclear, why would we do anything that could risk threatening its future?

America faces a crossroads. We can either trod a road of cultural decay or hike our way back to the peak of global innovation. Join me on the latter path. Correct the fear mongering and conspiracies and tell the story of America’s great reindustrialization. Tell the story of our public servants, our great entrepreneurs, our scientific dominance. Tell the real story about how DOGE went nuclear.

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

It’s curious to think how many philosophers must have been the life of the party.

[Sophia Proneikos @Pergament_F]

On this day,Sartre was born,the man who transformed philosophy from an academic discipline into a personal ordeal and who spent his life exploring one of the most difficult truths about the human condition,namely that freedom is neither a privilege, nor a reward, nor a consolation,but a destiny from which no one can escape.
Sartre was born in Paris in 1905,in a Europe that still lived with the confidence of the nineteenth century and had not yet begun to suspect that it would soon be shaken by wars, revolutions,ideologies, and catastrophes that would alter not only the political map of the world but the very understanding of human existence itself,while his life would unfold within this dramatic era in which old certainties disintegrated more rapidly than new ones could emerge.
His father,Sartre,died when the boy was only one year old,while his mother, Anne-Marie Schweitzer, returned to the home of her parents,where the future philosopher grew up under the strong influence of his grandfather Charles Schweitzer, an educated teacher and passionate admirer of literature, so that from his earliest years Sartre lived among books,ideas,and conversations that gradually shaped his conviction that human beings do not discover the meaning of life as something already completed, but are compelled to create it for themselves.

“I exist because I think.”

Although this statement is often associated with him as a summary of his worldview,his entire body of work represents a continuous exploration of consciousness,choice, and responsibility,because for Sartre a human being is never a fixed essence but an ongoing process of becoming, a continual act of self-creation through action.
His novel Nausea,his philosophical masterpiece Being and Nothingness, his plays, essays, and immense public presence established him as the most recognizable representative of existentialism,a philosophical movement that refuses comforting illusions and insists that human beings confront freedom, solitude, choice, and the consequences of their decisions directly.

“If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.”

Behind his intellectual rigor there always stood a profound interest in human beings as they truly are, because Sartre was never interested in abstract angels or idealized creatures, but in real men and women who make mistakes, hesitate, fear, love, and nevertheless continue to choose.
His personal life also became part of the cultural history of the twentieth century, because his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir remains one of the most famous intellectual partnerships of the modern age, founded upon freedom, mutual respect, conversation, and independence, while among the women who played important roles in his life were Olga Kosakiewicz, Wanda Kosakiewicz, Bianca Bienenfeld, and Arlette Elkaïm, who later became his adopted daughter and literary heir.
In 1964, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature for his entire body of work, and Sartre refused to accept it, invoking his principle of never accepting official distinctions because, in his own words, “a writer should not allow himself to become an institution,” a decision entirely consistent with his philosophy.

“Man is condemned to be free.”

This is probably his most famous statement and one of his most demanding, because it contains the entire unsettling beauty of his thought, according to which no one else can live in our place, choose in our place, or assume responsibility in our place.
The more I read Sartre, the more I begin to suspect that his true subject was never philosophy itself, but the human capacity to continuously transcend what one is at any given moment, because for him every human being always represents more than their past, more than their mistakes, and more than their circumstances.
And perhaps the finest conclusion today belongs once again to Sartre himself:

“As for people, what interests me is not what they are, but what they can become.”

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@paul_jkrause @PhilipDBunn They didn’t need to burn the books. People stop wanting to read in order to watch crappy stuff or scroll crappy stuff all on their own.

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@Jason @WIRED Wired used to talk about tech. Liked tech. Cars driving themselves all over the country? Crickets!

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

Isn’t that good news terrible?! If it isn’t bleeding, pretend it is?

[KTVU @KTVU]

A decline in car break-ins across Oakland is being welcomed as a public safety win, but it is also contributing to a downturn for some local auto glass repair businesses. https://t.co/14r7UeCpS1

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@DrSuneelDhand He did it without trading on inside information like Pelosi or backroom deals like Biden. How many mansions does Biden have now?

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@EZebroni Turo bills the thief for the damage and loss of revenue, right?

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@FischerKing64 Gemini is constantly buttering me up. You’re saying that it might not be sincere?

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@erasmuse Spend years learning languages that nobody speaks vs. reading books you can understand now. Hmmm. Tough choice.

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@joelpollak Do we get to see a replay of Russia’s oligarchs?

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@EZebroni “Sacred space” 🤣

[Robert Muir @BobMuir]

@PhilipDBunn Wow, great find! I want! First I need a house to put it in though.